Christopher J. Dodd was born in 1944 with a natural veil covering his face.
Being born with a caul, or thin remnants of the fetal membrane, is a rare, but harmless, biological fluke.
But to the Dodd family, it meant something more.
"In our upbringing, which was Irish ... it meant that this baby born with a caul was destined to greatness," said Dodd's older sister Martha Buonanno, 67, of Rhode Island.
Fast-forward 63 years, and Dodd, who represents Connecticut in the U.S. Senate, is running for president.
"I really think he's one of the real statesmen in the United States Senate," said Nelson resident William J. Rainer.
Rainer, 61, a former Connecticut businessman who has known Dodd since the mid-1980s, describes his friend as considerate, genuine and having a "terrific wit."
Christopher "Kip" O'Neill, another longtime friend of Dodd's, similarly described his humor.
"He has a wonderful gift and ability to see the humorous, human side of everybody," said O'Neill, 58, a Washington lawyer and lobbyist and son of former House Speaker Thomas Phillip "Tip" O'Neill Jr.
With a political career that has spanned more than three decades, Dodd is among the most experienced candidates in this year's presidential primary.
His problem?
Many people still don't know who he is.
From the beginning, Dodd said he knew his challenge would be to break through the celebrity status of many of his fellow candidates, "to be able to show people that experience of producing results really (does) matter."
Dodd's political career has included three terms as a congressman from Connecticut, and he's currently in his fifth term as a senator. During this time, Dodd has served on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was chairman of the Democratic National Committee and is now the chairman of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee.
He authored the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993, which provides up to provides 12 weeks of unpaid leave for personal and health issues and formed the first Senate Children's Caucus.
And this was all without a family of his own.
"He did all those things as a single guy," his sister, Buonanno, said of Dodd's work on behalf of women, children and families.
This involvement, Dodd said in an interview, "I think used to mystify some people - that the single senator would be so involved in children's issues."
But, he said, he didn't think parenthood was in the cards.
"You don't get everything in life and I had a wonderful career ... When I thought about the possibility of becoming a father, I didn't think it was probably going to happen."
After divorcing his first wife in 1982, he was pegged with a reputation as something of a playboy, according to Howard L. Reiter, head of the University of Connecticut's political science department. Among his reported girlfriends were Bianca Jagger and actress Carrie Fisher.
But, in 1999, at the age of 55, Dodd married Jackie Clegg, then an executive with the government's Export-Import Bank.
He was 57 when Jackie gave birth to Dodd's first daughter, Grace, now 6.
Grace was born on Sept. 13, 2001, in Arlington, Va., two days after the terrorist attacks.
"I did what every other parent, I think, has done throughout the ages," he said, "and that is I picked her up that afternoon, looked at her face and said to myself, 'What kind of world is this child going to grow up in?' ... So it changed everything in a sense, and in no small measure's why I'm running."
Also clearly influential to Dodd is a man who died 30 years before Grace's birth - his father, Thomas J. Dodd.
In 1953, Thomas Dodd traded his career as a lawyer for a career as a congressman, followed by multiple stints in the U.S. Senate.
Even as a child, Thomas Dodd called his son his "shadow," according to "Letters From Nuremberg," a book that combines Christopher Dodd's reflections with letters that Dodd's father sent to Dodd's mother during the Nuremberg trials.
At the beginning of his political career, Christopher Dodd remained, somewhat, in his father's shadow, according to Reiter.
"He started out in politics best known as the son of a famous father," Reiter said. "The joke that was going around the district in 1974 was that half the people (thought), 'He's just like his old man, and that's great.' The other half thought, 'He's nothing like his old man, and that's great.' "
Thomas Dodd was both hailed in his time as a prosecutor in the Nuremberg Trials and as a man who, in 1967, was censured by the Senate for allegedly misusing campaign funds.
Both had their effect on Christopher Dodd.
In the first section of "Letters from Nuremberg," Dodd calls his father's censure "the darkest days - days that my brothers and sisters and I still struggle with."
Saying that his father was never charged with any crime, Dodd wrote, "There is no doubt that a certain heartbreak about our father will always be with us."
In the book's prologue, Dodd also wrote about the profound importance of Nuremberg's message - that even Nazis deserved their day in court.
"If, for sixty years, a single word, Nuremberg, has best captured America's moral authority and commitment to justice, unfortunately, another word now captures the loss of such authority and commitment: Guantanamo," Dodd wrote.
Dodd's sister Buonanno also noted the impact the trial had on her brother.
"When my father came back from Nuremberg, there was no word 'Holocaust,' but we grew up in a family where we knew what had happened to the Jews in Europe," Buonanno said. "We talked about it all the time ... So I think all those things really were a tremendous influence on (Dodd)."
Sixty years after the trial, Dodd wrote in his book, "In a mockery of justice we lock away terrorism suspects for years and give them no real day in court. We deny the lessons of Nuremberg, of universal rights to justice."
As president, Dodd has vowed to restore civil liberties that he believes have been compromised during President Bush's administration, which is one of the reasons Charlestown resident Cynthia P. Sweeney said she's backing the Connecticut senator.
Sweeney said she shares this commitment, explaining that it was bred in her by eight Ursuline nuns at St. Thomas the Apostle in West Hartford, Conn., where both she and Dodd attended elementary school.
Recalling Dodd as a popular "little tow-headed kid" at recess, Sweeney said six of the eight nuns at the school were Irish immigrants, just like Dodd's ancestors.
"They taught us to appreciate what we had here in the United States," she said. And during Dodd's campaign, she added, "Those are the things that he has championed."
